In a bizarre and yet amazing turn of events, the following picture was uploaded to this page and yet—somehow—the person who uploaded it never got around to attaching it to the page!

Procrastination, n: To put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness.

Practiced by students around the world, procrastinating can be a fine art form and it's not just for students! Nearly anyone can procrastinate on nearly anything! Bills, reading, homework... The amount of 'valid' work that can be done while procrastinating doing something important boggles the mind. "Study breaks", "computer breaks", "music breaks", "anything-under-the-sun breaks" — these are just synonyms for not doing what you're supposed to be doing. Procrastination is the common religion that brings us all together. It is like masturbation for the mind — it feels good until you realize that you are only screwing yourself.

Structured Procrastination

Procrastination can often be turned into Structured Procrastination — the process in which a ton of work unrelated to what you're supposed to be doing gets done. Davis Wiki is a great form of structured procrastination, and was largely formed (even the development) out of a need to waste time on something unrelated to what everyone was supposed to be doing. A key excerpt from John Perry's excellent essay on the topic:

Procrastinators often follow exactly the wrong tack. They try to minimize their commitments, assuming that if they have only a few things to do, they will quit procrastinating and get them done. But this goes contrary to the basic nature of the procrastinator and destroys his most important source of motivation. The few tasks on his list will be by definition the most important, and the only way to avoid doing them will be to do nothing. This is a way to become a couch potato, not an effective human being.

How do you procrastinate or overcome procrastination?

So if I'm at work, not working, playing on DavisWiki and "studying" for a midterm, and it's 3:00 PM and I would normally be on break and smoking a cigarette, except I'm on a permanent break from smoking (except when I take a break from that, like I did on Saturday night), am I taking a break from my break while on break? —ss

And to think, I'm editing this page instead of studying for tomorrow's 8AM math final. —ZacMorris

2008-04-01 23:05:52 I just found this page! Awesome. I too suffer from chronic procrastination. While taking ENL 101 several years ago, I wrote one my best essays on procrastination. My prof really liked it. And of course, I procrastinated on the assignment, but I managed to bang it out the day before it was due (which, for me, was "getting it done early"). —CurlyGirl26